Alice Guy: First Lady of Film

Alice Guy is a real life person from the 19th century.  She was one of the pioneers in  filmmaking. Guy was also one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. This graphic biography covers her life from childhood to her death in 1969.

The publisher's summary:

In 1895 the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph. Less than a year later, 23-year-old Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker in cinema history, made The Cabbage Fairy, a 60-second movie, for Léon Gaumont, and would go on to direct more than 300 films before 1922. Her life is a shadow history of early cinema, the chronicle of an art form coming into its own. A free and independent woman who rubbed shoulders with masters such as Georges Méliès and the Lumières, she was the first to define the professions of screenwriter and producer. She directed the first feminist satire, then the first sword-and-sandal epic, before crossing the Atlantic in 1907 to the United States and becoming the first woman to found her own production company. Guy died in 1969, excluded from the annals of film history. In 2011 Martin Scorsese honored this cinematic visionary, “forgotten by the industry she had helped create,” describing her as “a filmmaker of rare sensitivity, with a remarkable poetic eye and an extraordinary feel for locations.” The same can be said of Catel and Bocquet’s luminous account of her life.

This book is over 400 pages. The first and last 100 pages were engaging but I got a little bored in the middle. I must say, though, that the history of movie making is covered in detail. Readers more interested in movies than I will love this novel. Readers will see the progression of filmmaking here. When Guy and other filmmakers began, they made one reel films. Then 5 and 6 reel films became popular, but filmmakers didn't make much money from them, forcing many out of the industry. 

Guy created many firsts in cinema, defining the professions of screenwriter, director and producer.  Another first was her film A Fool and His Money which had an all African American cast. Guy died in 1969 and has been excluded from film history until recently. There are full biographies of her that have been written. It was interesting that she began her career as a secretary to a photographer who worked in chronophotography. Chronophotography is photographs affixed to a round disc. As viewers rotated the photographs movement was created. Then the cinematograph was invented and the rest of history. 

At the back of the book is an extensive section that includes a timeline of pivotal events in the invention of cinema, biographical notes of other filmmakers, and Guy's filmography bibliography. It is a great resource for those interested in movie history.

5 out of 5 stars.